The present disclosure relates generally to the field of semiconductor manufacturing and, more particularly, to a semiconductor manufacturing fault detection and management system and method.
The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced rapid growth. Technological advances in IC materials and design have produced generations of ICs where each generation has smaller and more complex circuits than the previous generation. However, these advances have increased the complexity of processing and manufacturing ICs and, for these advances to be realized, similar developments in IC processing and manufacturing have been needed. For example, an IC is formed by creating one or more devices (e.g., circuit components) on a substrate using a fabrication process. As the geometry of such devices is reduced to the submicron or deep submicron level, the IC's active device density (i.e., the number of devices per IC area) and functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per IC area) has become limited by the fabrication process.
Furthermore, as the IC industry has matured, the various operations needed to produce an IC may be performed at different locations by a single company or by different companies that specialize in a particular area. This further increases the complexity of producing ICs, as companies and their customers may be separated not only geographically, but also by time zones, making effective communication more difficult. For example, a first company (e.g., an IC design house) may design a new IC, a second company (e.g., an IC foundry) may provide the processing facilities used to fabricate the design, and a third company may assemble and test the fabricated IC. A fourth company may handle the overall manufacturing of the IC, including coordination of the design, processing, assembly, and testing operations.
The complexity of process steps and time-consuming process of manufacturing advanced semiconductor devices mandates efficient processing systems and methods, specifically the methods of detection and management of system errors, excursions, and fault detection of systems in a semiconductor fabrication environment. Common practice for error detection systems has been to allow service clients to collect or retrieve trap messages or errors and to then send the information to a system administrator to perform any system checking or corrective action. However, sometimes false error messages or trap messages may be sent to an administrator due to a malfunctioning or unstable checking system, unstable or malfunctioning network interconnects or devices, or unstable or busy application service system.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method for providing detection and management of system faults or errors in a semiconductor manufacturing environment.